Creating and Consuming “Hill Country Harmonica”
Creating and Consuming “Hill Country Harmonica”
Promoting the Blues and Forging Beloved Community in the Contemporary south
This chapter describes and reflects on the process by which the author, a white southern studies scholar, created and promoted a blues-based event in rural north Mississippi in partnership with the African American owners of a local horse farm. It explores contemporary forms of interracialism—musical, journalistic, economic—as they take public and private shape on Deep South terrain haunted by longstanding legacies of racial exploitation. The author evokes the paradoxes encountered by the wearing of two hats: skilful promotion of Hill Country Harmonica demands the marshalling of desire within potential consumers for some version of a sweet, lyrical, beckoning, pastoral South; yet the scholar is trained—and trains his own students--to see through such mythic fabrications. Beloved community is ultimately forged with the help of the profit motive and, unexpectedly, the transracial alliance of two U.S. military veterans who were stakeholders in the event.
Keywords: Blues, Mississippi, Interracial, South, Pastoral, Beloved community, Mythic, Racial exploitation
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